Hey guys, welcome to double shot of Steelers.

I'm Dan Kovachovich of DK. Pittsburgh Sports.

This actually represented today the beginning, the formal beginning of your football team's offseason in the most

understated possible way.

For anybody who's not familiar with this, April 7 today marks the Steelers being able to go

into the building, their facility, on strictly voluntary basis,

and work out and talk to the coaches and meet with them.

And there's no actual football stuff.

There's no going out into the grass or over into the turf area.

It's just mostly verbal. It's mostly just guys talking about,

in this case, getting to meet their coaches. This matters. Normally, and this is probably

why you haven't heard about this in the past, because it's the same head coach for 18 years.

And everybody knows everything and everybody knows everybody with few exceptions.

So whereas I would have normally been saying to you, I don't care about attendance for something like this.

I just don't. I want, you know,

these are voluntary. The players have earned this right through the NFL's labor pact. If it's

voluntary, they don't have to be there and good for them. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Not this year. Mike McCarthy's a

new head coach. He's got new coordinators. He's got new assistants.

There's all a boatload of new everything, not least of which is playbooks, concepts.

I want this team to begin demonstrating its dedication now and to their credit. There have been at least, this is not the

final number, 26 players who were in there, among them, and I'm going to read you some of the

names. And just because you don't hear the name doesn't mean that they weren't there. But T.J. Watt was there.

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